


Barren

by t0talcha0s



Category: BioShock, BioShock 2
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Grace-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 17:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5879725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grace always knew she wanted children, "want of a child defines you." Sofia Lamb had told her, but she never thought she'd get a child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barren

**Author's Note:**

> Go to sleep little babe  
> Go to sleep little babe
> 
> Your momma's gone away and your daddy's gonna stay  
> Didn't leave nobody but the baby
> 
> Don't you weep pretty babe  
> Don't you weep pretty babe
> 
> She's long gone with her red shoes on  
> Gonna need another loving babe
> 
> Go to sleep little babe  
> Go to sleep little babe
> 
> You and me and the devil makes three  
> Don't need no other lovin' babe  
> -Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and Gillian Welch)

Fontaine's is out of business, Culpepper is dead, James is gone, and Grace Holloway is scared for Rapture and scared for herself. She don't sing the same songs she did anymore, not since Culpepper was bumped off, not since James was taken, not since she began to fear her life. No now she don't speak out against Ryan, and Cohen, and the rest of the corrupt in her songs no more; now she sings _Rise Rapture Rise,_ and she sings it with shame in her eyes. The blue butterfly broach on her lapel makes her heart heavy and her shoulders slump. 

Sofia Lamb is rotting in maximum security prison, Grace hasn't any doubts that she'll keep her ways in Persephone but today her baby girl's coming home with Grace. Eleanor is a precious little thing, dark hair, sparkling eyes, a smile that lights up the world like the sun does topside. Grace has always wanted children and she laments the fact that this is the closest she'll get, what now with no James and no biological chance at it, she cried the whole week she found out she was barren. 

Eleanor's pretty voice rings with the same high-and-mighty European accent what saturated her mama's tone when she practically sings, 

"Auntie Grace!" Grace can't help but smile and return an excited,

"Hey there baby. What's say you an me head back home, these brutes musta been treating you nasty." Eleanor picks up her little suitcase full of the possessions they let her keep when they shoved her out of her home and wraps her other little hand around Grace's fingers and Grace's world lights aflame and she has never been so happy. Though Lamb's in jail and she ought to feel broken and empty and barren at the thought, Lamb's own flesh and blood's her child now and that's all she's ever wanted. 

The drop ain't no place to raise a child proper, but Grace paints the walls pink, and finds a teddy bear and mends and sews it up best she knows how, and Eleanor seems to fit in just right and cozy with her surroundings. Grace still makes her money crooning patriotic propaganda at The Limbo Room but she mostly shrugs the work aside to spend every waking moment she can by Eleanor's side. Eleanor may be Sofia's biological daughter and protege, but she's Grace's child, though her fair skin, and European accent, and the way she calls Grace "Auntie" proves she's not a Holloway through and through. 

-

Each morning Grace gets up, showers, dresses, and puts on her blue butterfly pin. Sometimes it pricks her, once it made her bleed, she don't know why she even wears it anymore. The pin is more of a statement then she'd like to make, especially because each morning she quakes in her boots thinking about the people gone missing in Apollo Square, so she covers it up with a scarf draped 'round her shoulders. She can't be young and risky no more, she's got a child to tend to, and little Eleanor is all she'll ever need really. Each morning Grace wakes Eleanor with a, 

"Rise and shine pretty girl." And each morning the gentle chuckle and, 

"I'm up auntie." Hurts a little more. She gets so caught up in her wishing that every time she's snapped back into the reality that the girl ain't hers it stings like salt water in a wound, and there's plenty of salt water in Rapture. But all of it just makes Grace hug Eleanor a little bit tighter and love her a little bit more. 

-

The tension that had held Rapture captive has finally snapped and as the explosion at the Kashmir dies down Grace Holloway closes the doors to The Limbo Room with a harsh snap. It's too dangerous, too risky to be singing pretty songs against angry, vindictive titans anymore, and the people just can't and won't pay for petty crooning. Rise Rapture Rise won't draw a happy crowd no more. Grace ain't sure how she's gonna make ends meet now. The Drop's turned even more sour and rancid and while she can handle them splicers they certainly don't make this war less messy, or Pauper's Drop more appealing to the rich snobs at Ryan's feet. But the night The Limbo Room closed its doors for the last time, when she's braiding Eleanor's pretty, black hair and singing her lullabies, she knows she'll do whatever it takes to keep her baby safe and comfortable, with or without The Limbo Room. 

"You have a beautiful voice Auntie." Eleanor says, and Grace smiles and thanks her and sings her favorite song, an ole lullaby her momma sung to her back in Louisiana. At least someone can still appreciate her voice, at least it can make her little girl happy. 

-

Dionysus Park ain't what it used to be. Back when Lamb was free it was a "pivotal social experiment in artistic collectivism", some pretty space for Lamb and The Family to be free and dress up their anti-Ryan sentiments in paint and canvas. Now all that money that set up galleries and gardens is funneled into wild parties with plenty of risqué activity and scantily-clad party-goers. It isn't a place for a sweet little child like Eleanor, so Grace doesn't often take her; but the carousel's still running, and Eleanor enjoys seeing her friends and familiar spaces so occasionally Grace shells out the fees to get in and tries to avoid the more sordid sections. 

"I want to ride _that_ horse Auntie!" Eleanor's smile stretches across her young little face, pointing excitedly at a horse with bows in its ceramic mane. 

"'Course you can have that one love child." And Grace settles her on the toy and watches her giggle with glee as she spins round and round. After her ride Eleanor pulls her into one of the old galleries to show Grace her favorite painting. One of the works is magnificent, a great blue butterfly composed of hands of all shapes and sizes, The Family's essence imbued on the wall. Grace can't help but be distracted by the beauty and power of it. She squares her shoulders. "I hope I'm doing you proud doctor." She can feel the cold of the pin on her breastbone and can feel the presence of Lamb in the air, it makes her shiver. 

She turns around to find little Eleanor again and the familiar smiling face ain't behind her. Grace walks through the gallery, nerves ratcheting up her spine as she doesn't see her baby. She passes lewd splicers, unsightly things, she prays Eleanor didn't have to see such scenes. 

"Eleanor! Love child!" She cries through the halls of Dionysus parks as she scampers through them, desperately searching for her. It seems like hours, it very well might be, she can't find her. Her heart races, her stomach flips, she fears she's going to vomit. Her child, she needs to find her, her feet have never moved faster, her voice has never been louder. 

The sea outside turns dark as the sun topside sets, Grace wants to cry or scream. It's too dangerous with the spliced up lunatics in Dionysus park after dark, Grace left her sidearm at home, she's never liked packing heat, barely knows how to shoot the damn thing. When she gets home the Drop seems more a mess then ever but she doesn't dare move it an inch because any of it could be little Eleanor's. 

She cries. Cries until she feels numb and empty and hardly of this earth. She cries until she feels barren, and she laughs bitterly at the irony of it. The eyes of Doctor Sofia Lamb pierce down at her from the poster on her wall, all knowing, as if even in Persephone she knows how ashamed Grace is. She cries and sleeps until all she feels she is is salt water and exhaustion. 

-

When she sees one of those repulsive big daddies stomping through the corridors of the Drop a jolt of fear and anger shoots through her. She knows that little sister, that's her baby, that's where Eleanor went, that damned monster ripped her from her clutches and went and turned a perfect, innocent baby girl into a godforsaken creature. Grace can't have none of that, some tin daddy tromping around with her child, she won't stand for it. Grace, small in stature though she be, squares her shoulders and stomps, like she too were wearing metal boots, towards the creature. 

"Come on home now Eleanor." She drawls reaching a hand out to her daughter, who she knows will recognize her through those glowing yellow eyes, despite the fear they show. She grabs Eleanor's wrist lightly, and her baby screams, ear-piercing and not nearly human. That tin daddy whips around, and charges at her. Grace feels her adrenaline pump and starts to run, but daddy's fist slams into her jaw, she feels a crack, and then she feels a hit to the back of her head, and then she don't feel nothing. 

When she comes to she's sitting in the living room of some charitable neighbors, ones with blue butterfly pins on their shirts. 

"We'll always take in family." They explained, and Grace wishes she could smile, but her jaws wired tight, broke, she won't be able to sing. Grace has never felt the hatred and anger that boils in her chest before, that feeling is totally new, and it consumes her. Damn that tin daddy to hell, damn all tin daddies to hell, she'll get her precious girl back. 

-

Rapture is out of business, Ryan's dead, and Eleanor is back with her momma, her _real_ momma, right proper like she should be. She's being tutored and pampered like Grace couldn't Sofia Lamb calls Eleanor her "life's work" and Grace can't help but want to correct her that no m'am that ain't no work that's a precious, beautiful child. She doesn't, and as if as a punishment Lamb sticks Grace as the mayor of Pauper's Drop, she's too busy controlling the splicers and trash that litter her street to visit Eleanor. 

And today. Today the hulking tin daddy what stole Eleanor from her in the first place lumbered away from Grace after confronting her face to face.

 _"Go 'head and kill me, that's all your kind is good for."_ Her words ring through her head, he didn't kill her, the tin daddy might have heart after all. A monster, and that's what she's thought of him since he stole her baby and her voice, doesn't do that. A thinking man does that. For the first time, in a long time since she's felt so numb, Grace cries, a few tears down her cheeks. The hot tears catch on her wrinkles and she feels old, and she feels angry, and she feels sad, and apologetic, and floored and at least she doesn't feel so damn scared and barren anymore. 

She sends him some whirlybirds as a gift, she feels resolute, he should go help her baby, her daddy wants what's best for her. 

"Good luck tin daddy." She says, and Grace, for the first time since she joined with Lamb, Grace feels hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Yo yo I love Grace so much. Just finished replaying bioshock 2. 
> 
> My tumblr's @barefootcosplayer


End file.
